1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a process for aromatizing and/or removing certain smoke fume constituents from tobacco smoke or tobacco smoke drawn from a cigarette. The process is carried out by means of a flowable carrier material or filtration material for aromatizing products, which is arranged in a cavity of a mouthpiece of the cigarette, wherein the flowable active carrier material or filter material for aromatizing products is, before being put into this cavity mixed with at least one flowable material which is inactive with respect to tobacco smoke flowing through to give a mixture which is as homogeneous as possible, and, mixed in this way, is introduced into the cavities. The invention further relates to a cigarette end piece, in particular a cigarette filter, for carrying the process and to a use of this process.
2. Description of the Prior Art
It is already known that the cavities of so-called cavity filters can be partially filled with the greatest variety of flowable carrier material and/or filter material for aromatizing products, since in the case of certain tobacco types completely filling these cavities with these granular materials would have too great an influence and thus a negative influence, on the tobacco smoke flowing through these cavities and, moreover, would also be too expensive. If, however, a filter cavity is filled for example only to 5% of its volume with an active material of this type, then, observed over the entire flow cross-section of the flow of smoke fumes that the smoker draws into his mouth, only a quite narrow, small segment of the flow of smoke fumes is aromatized or filtered, and in some cases this occurs in a different manner each time the smoker draws on a cigarette of this type, which is extremely undesirable as regards the sense of taste of a smoker.
Furthermore, cavities which are only partially filled with flowable active material have the effect that the cigarette filters provided therewith a risk of collapsing on further processing (that is to say when they are transported and connected to the tobacco part to form the filter cigarettes) when used in certain further processing plants because of the insufficient stabilities of these partially filled cavities, and this can give rise to unpleasant disruptions in the further processing of cigarette filters of this type. Furthermore, cigarette filters having cavities only partially filled with flowable or permeable active material have the further disadvantage that, on flowing through these only partially filled cavities, the tobacco smoke follows the path of least flow resistance, that is to say it flows through the unfilled part of a cavity of this type instead of through the granular active material, as a result of which is the achieving of optimum exploitation of the activity not being possible.